Wikipedia talk:No pet peeve wars

This looks like an interesting issue to discuss

I'll have to see how many other Wikipedia essays already touch on this issue. I agree that we cannot expect and shouldn't desire absolute consistency of English style across all articles on English Wikipedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:26, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Grammar only?

I'm not sure I agree with everything you're saying, but it's an interesting read. The rules about British vs. American punctuation and about dashes are the two most frequently contested parts of WP:MoS. Have you considered adding punctuation to your list or are you only doing grammar? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:39, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a little different because the MOS can and does take care of that, but it generally doesn't go into grammar usage. Personally I would advocate the same for punctuation, but I think that would be harder to get people to swallow. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:46, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

You might want to retitle this to something like "Grammar peeves"—otherwise the essay could get unwieldy. There's virtually no aspect of WP article-writing that someone doesn't have a peeve about. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 04:52, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Aye. As I noted in thread below, this really just betrays the author's own biases about what he subjectively feels is important vs. trivial. The actual underlying problem is WP:EDITWARring, which we already have a policy about. Many essays clarify, interpret, or apply policies and guidelines in a helpful way for editors in general, but this one amounts to "Don't editwar about this particular thing, because I don't like it". Honestly, I think this should be userspaced.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

"double negatives"

The double negative is always incorrect vs. double negatives are acceptable in constructions such as "not unattractive"

This is confusing a number of issues: the injunction against the "double negative" normally refers to negative concord (e.g. "I didn't see nothing)—this is what the vast majority of people mean when they say/see "double negative: two negatives that reinforce one another (as in the Spanish No vi nada, "I didn't see nothing" meaning "I didn't see anything"). "not unattracive" is a double negative in that the two negatives cancel each other out regardless of whether the speaker typically uses negative concord—the proscription against it is strictly a matter of style and not a dispute over correctness. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 04:47, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think proscription of "double negatives" is commonly intended to include the use of two-negatives for the purpose of litotes or to legitimately negate a negative (e.g. "not uncommon"). I don't think the essay should apply to phrases like "not uncommon", though I would probably not revert if someone changed it to something equally acceptable (assuming it did not inappropriately change the meaning). Obviously, use of more than one negative should be avoided when the result might be confusing ("I challenge anyone to refute that this essay is not unnecessary").--Boson (talk) 14:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you, I was going by one of Steven Pinker's pieces on non-useful prescriptivisms and was myself surprised that he called that usage a double negative. A different problem with this one is of course is that lots of vernacular varieties do use an actual double negative, and the rule is part of a general tendency to stigmatize traits associated with those varieties. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:26, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, it is a double negative, just not what most people think of when they hear the term "double negative": George Orwell doesn't call it a "double negative", just "the not un- formation" (and proscribes against it). Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I think "proscribes against it" is also a double negative then. ;) ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:30, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

That wouldn't be untrue. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:42, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I concur with Curly Turkey; the grammatical problem is with negative concord, not every construction that contains two words with a negative connotation. (And negative concord isn't even a problem generally, just in certain languages like English; in many Spanish constructions, for example, it's required.) From a linguistic description perspective, negative concord is not "wrong", it's simply not a feature of more formal registers. From a prescriptive grammar perspective, negative concord in English is to be avoided because it inverts the intended meaning on a close reading, and is thus ambiguous (a reader is not necessarily certain what register the writer is using).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

examples

One of these examples is clearly deprecated in the MOS; the avoidance of contractions in articles (outside of quotations, of course). Primergrey (talk) 08:05, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Non-standard fleemishes

It hinders communication if we don't use the same spelling or grammar. Yes, you can decide to use non-standard fleemishes and the reader can still gloork the meaning from the context, but there ix a limit; If too many ot the vleeps are changed, it becomes harder and qixer to fllf what the wethcz is blorping, and evenually izs is bkb longer possible to ghilred frok at wifx. Dnighth? Ngfipht yk ur! Uvq the hhvd or hnnngh. Blorgk? Blorgk! Blorgkity-blorgk!!!! --Guy Macon (talk) 09:34, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

You dont seem to have read the essay which is not about "non-standard fleemishes" at all, but about usages that are considered correct by considerable numbers of professional English writers, and which do not hinder communication except for those who have been taught that those usages are wrong and who therefore cannot help but stop reading the sentence when they see the offending usage to instead rage about how incompetent the writer was.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Which is nothing at all like stopping working on the encyclopedia in constructive ways, to instead rage about how unproductive other editors are being, about stuff you consider trivia but which they find important? LOL. Anyway, to address the underlying raison d'etre of this essay, the obvious solution when this sort of thing comes up is to, when possible, rewrite to avoid the problem for everyone. When this is not possible, engage in consensus discussion. When that discussion is not working, accusations of "disruption" against the person you are not agreeing with are generally not helpful – to the discussion, to resolving the underlying concern, to working on the encyclopedia, or even to other editors' views of your position and participation in the dispute. "It takes two to argue." Seek dispute resolution. I also find that it simply helps to STFU, move on, and revisit the issue a few months later. About 7 times out of 10, the other party to the dispute simply WP:DGAFs, and won't notice or care that you're writing your way instead of his/her way. It's been observed by many on and off WP that WP is written, and consensus is steered, by those with the long-term patience to keep editing. Consensus can change and so can temporary failure to reach it. This doesn't mean engage in what you neologistically call "slow edit warring", by being tendentious; I'm talking about cases where you can provide a rationale and defend it, beyond mere WP:ILIKEIT. Waiting several months and trying a justifiable change again isn't tendentious. That said, keeping a "shit list" of stuff you are going to have your way no matter what, and scheduling when you're going to go try to revert others' changes again, would be very tendentious. Like everything else on WP, apply WP:COMMONSENSE in large quantities. The more noise you make about something, the more likely you're going to be seen as tendentious about it. In your case, Maunus, a slow program of reverting changes related to the word "comprise" will be seen as tendentious by everyone, because you raised a big deal at Village Pump about it, and failed to get consensus for your version (last I looked anyway; it was about 50/50, which means "no consensus").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:13, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

An essay doesnt need consensus. I wasnt proposing a policy. Both views obviously have support. Which is what the entire essay is about.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:30, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

This would be more convincing if you sourced it

I have my doubts that professional writers really think that things like this are okay. A good source for this is the American Heritage Dictionary's site. They often provide usage notes with assessments of things like when it became okay to use "decimate" to mean "destroy a lot of" rather than "destroy only one tenth of." Here's their take on "gender": [1] Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:03, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

But use multiple sources. The entire rationale behind the American Heritage Dictionary, for instance, was to return American lexicography to the "good ol' days" before Webster's Third International took a more linguistic description instead of prescriptive grammar approach. So, what AHD advises tends to very strongly reflect what conservative, American publishers and editors prefer. As another example, the editors of the Chicago Manual of Style are pretty convinced they are correct and leading the world in style; this makes them both highly resistant to accepting general style shifts that can be observed in actual practice, but also stubbornly unwilling to drop a "rule" they feel is traditional, especially if it's one that's particularly associated with the CMoS itself, like typesetter's quotation. CMoS admits it's "illogical" but that it should be used anyway, basically just because they say so. The AP and NYT and other journalistic guides, as another set of examples, are entirely devoted to news style, which has expediency (both readers' and journalists'/editor') as its foremost concern. Strong biases like this are why MOS doesn't defer to any particular style guide.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Comments on this at WT:MOS

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

See Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_166#Pet Peeves for some community commentary on this essay  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:51, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with the criticisms there. Ediwarring at all is the problem, not any of these "peeves". The selection of these particular issues and their being denigrated as peeves (i.e. things that don't matter) simply indicates the personal biases of the essay's [principal] author.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:51, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I wouldnt expect you to agree. Your own biases are hardly irrelevant either.The MOS discussion hardly represents a community view, and only a couple of editors actually express the view you say you agree with. In the much more extensive discussion at the villagepump there was substantial support for my though of course also also a substantial portion thought comprised of was bad grammar and giraffedata is a swell editor. (which is not really a relevant argumentfor the essay at all) ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:26, 3 June 2015 (UTC)